And she’s been far from the only one. Even far from the only one that night. When Peterson pulled her car over near Saucon Park, there were five or six cars also stopped by flat tires. One of the cars had two tires punctured at once.

“I couldn’t see it coming. I was traveling at a safe speed, but it was huge, it was probably 2 feet deep,” said Peterson, a musician from Sussex County, N.J. “It was really bad.”

Lehigh Valley and northwest New Jersey officials are in full agreement — it is really bad out there. Both longtime directors of Bethlehem and Easton’s public works departments said it’s likely the worst pothole season in their memory.

“It’s substantially more than I’ve seen for quite a while,” said Bethlehem Public Works Director Michael Alkhal, who has been with the city for 17 years.

Both Bethlehem and Allentown launched their annual pothole hotlines more than a month earlier than usual — Allentown opened its line this year in January. And it’s been steadily ringing, city spokesman Mike Moore said.

“It’s an earlier than usual season, and that goes back like a month ago because there was that mid-January thaw,” he said.

Freeze,
thaw, freeze, thaw

While many people have enjoyed the brief stretches of high-40s and 50-degree weather this winter, they’ve been bad news for potholes, officials said. Warm weather allows for the snow to melt but when it freezes again, it can crack asphalt, leading to potholes.

“There’s been a lot more freeze-thaw cycle than we’ve seen in the past, so I’ve seen a lot more increased damage,” Easton Public Works Director David Hopkins said.

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Sean Brown also pointed to this winter’s repeating freeze-thaw as the reason for so many potholes. In addition to Route 412, the state also has received a lot of complaints about the condition of Route 378 in the Bethlehem area, he said.

When they’re not plowing snow, PennDOT road crews have been out on a regular basis filling potholes, Brown said. The problem, however, is that because it’s still cold, crews can only use what’s called a cold patch to fix them instead of asphalt, which holds better, Brown said.

“You can patch it and the material can break down and you have a pothole again,” he said. “That’s just what we have to deal with until the weather breaks.”

Bethlehem and Easton also are using cold patch fixes, which they’ll replace with asphalt when it’s warmer, officials said.

Allentown has a machine that can lay down hot material even in the winter so it won’t have to redo its pothole repairs in the spring, Moore said.

And unlike increased snow removal, increased potholes aren’t a budget buster, Moore said. Allentown spent only $26,000 last year to repair 4,000 potholes, so even an increase in that number shouldn’t be too costly, he said.

Roads are rough on cars

New Jersey Department of Transportation
Commissioner James Simpson announced Thursday he’s allowing crews to
close travel lanes, including during peak hours, for priority pothole
repairs. Department workers will use cold patch and filling machines,
while crews from contractor Schifano Construction will use hot asphalt
to repair individual potholes and sections of damaged highway, according
to a news release.

Phillipsburg
Mayor Harry Wyant said public works crews have been busy filling
potholes for the past several days as water seeps into cracks in the
road.
Several potholes have cropped up on South Main Street, and a huge one
opened up on Roseberry Street, Wyant said.

“It’s been horrendous,”
he said. “Every day, they’re popping with the cold weather. We’re
trying to get them all, but it’s a huge job.”

Officials will need
to designate more money for roads in the 2014 budget to cover additional
work for pothole repairs, he said. The cost of potholes is adding up
for the drivers who hit them, too.

Barry Lasher, owner of Honest-1 Auto Care in Flemington,
said mechanics at his garage have been repairing three or four cars a day that had
fallen victim to potholes in the past two weeks. The fix costs an
average of $800 to $1,000, he said. Cars are designed to handle a
certain amount of pressure, but pothole hits affect the whole front end.

Lasher
has another warning: Check the rearview mirror before slowing down to
avoid a pothole. He said he’d rather take his chances on the pothole
than risk getting rear-ended. He recognizes that sometimes hitting them is
unavoidable. The direction of the steering wheel and the angle at which a
driver hits a pothole determine the extent of the damage, Lasher said.

Lopatcong Township
public works crews have also been vigilant, looking for the deep holes and patching them up with a temporary fill, Councilwoman Donna
Schneider said. They fixed holes on Strykers Road, Red School Lane and
Baltimore Street, she said. Once they deal with the major roads, they
will go to the smaller ones.

“Since there’s more travel, they want to have the least amount of damage done to anyone’s cars,” Schneider said.

*****

How to report potholes:

Allentown: Call 610-437-8775 or fill out a form on the city’s website, allentownpa.gov